Perseus meteor shower in the UAE

Fenomena alam membuat kita selalu takjub dan merasa kecil di hadapanNya.

Seperti yang terjadi di UAE dalam bulan Agustus lalu. Dikutip dari sini.

I've never felt so duped before; I drove all the way out 3/4 of the way to Al Ain because everyone was ranting about some meteor shower.

So a friend and myself drive, drive some more, and drive some more, and eventually come to some small exit from the Dubai-Al Ain road. Where I had hoped to go would have been a pain given the current roadworks.
With hand painted street signs, no street lighting and almost no sign of civilization (except for the customary grocery every 1 km) I have no idea where I was. I actually looked at my GPS and none of the streets were on it at all, I was in the middle of nowhere. I may as well have been navigating through the empty quarter. Then I see a tree on the road.

Not just any tree. A tree in the middle of the road. Not knocked over. As in a tree growing in the middle of the road. The road has actually physically been built around the tree.

Following the road I come to some sort of a track... A camel race track! I drive into the sand a little and park my car, take out all the photography stuff and sit... and wait...

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...and wait...


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Waiting for the camera exposures is painful; an 8 minute exposure really is somewhere on the scale of time right up beside eternity.

Trying to see a shooting star (or whatever the technical term may be) is hard enough on its own, however trying to get a photograph of a meteor shower is like staring at a blank wall and expecting it to spontaneously combust. It's just not going to happen.

Even though I saw a few shooting stars it wasn't like there was some mass or continuous stream of them at all. that's what I call false advertising. I didn't even see any at the same time as my friend, leading me to believe they probably don't exist. There are barely any photos of them, and when you tell someone you've just seen a shooting star 9/10 will say "Really?" because it is really next to impossible.

Even though we were in the middle of nowhere, there was still a lot of light pollution. The light pollution isn't from any form of civilization it's from the damn moon!


The other immediate problem was from dust in the air. Visibility wasn't the greatest. I guess I got to see some shooting stars and enjoyed listening to some music while waiting around in the humid and warm (~30°C) weather. I did enjoy the drive out to the desert. I probably got to see 5-6 shooting stars in total, thats what I'd call false advertising.